taz is tired of "idw" fans who are really just mtmte fans

[redthedragon]

i'm super tempted to make a post on a more public-facing site (thinking tumblr probably) where i start talking about how the Stunticons could make for a really harrowing child-soldier exploration in a "grimdark but with feeling" kind of story, like there is in parts of idw. but i know for a fact people are gonna be like "yeah! mtmte is so good :)" and i am talking about like. RID and Wreckers. MTMTE was literally the least emotionally satisfying part of IDW for me and i'm honestly getting really fucking tired of everyone else being like "romance! no consequences! everything ends good and :) for no reason! this is an emotionally fulfilling arc! no plot actions have weight and nothing matters, yay!" where what i mean is like
please i just want the characters to have responses to things.

FOR THE RECORD i DO like MTMTE it just doesn't hit the spot for me i'm not even trying to yuck on it. just. if i want to talk about parts of IDW that explore actions and consequences MTMTE is literally at the bottom of the list. I would rather look at Phase 1 than MTMTE for that. MTMTE is a great example of a comic that pretends to care about the dark stuff and then throws all the consequences out because nearly every single character has plot armor, even when they die

Comments

[sexytronians]

I think this sums up why I can’t get into MTMTE. Things being queer doesn’t magically mean I’m going to enjoy them especially when as you said there aren’t consequences.

Also I love that idea for the Stunticons so much. I would love to see them explored in a story like that gives depth and emotional weight to them as characters. Particularly something that gives Motormaster a chance to be just as emotionally fucked up and traumatised as the other Stunticons.

Megatron creating child soldiers that idolise him at least in Motormaster’s case is so harrowing.
And kids being exploited by adults politically and emotionally is always a topical and important thing to explore. Even when the Stunticons are created as adult robots it can still smack readers in the face with them being naive, inexperienced and immature. And the tragedy of that in a bloody war.

…okay I got very excited there and it’s way past my bedtime but you get the idea I love this. :P

[redthedragon]

Oh yeah, and I mean- listen Motormaster is such a potentially devastating character. Like I think we all know at least one person who we just fucking hated for reasons of They Were A Huge Dick and then like. they never got any better and they were still utterly intolerable but you found out through the grapevine some details that made the whole thing make sense and ur just like "oh. oh no. i feel slightly bad for being acidic back when they were being acidic at me"
so that already hits in a few like. Common Regrets

and then you got the secondary element of Motormaster just like. clearly and obviously traumatizing his ENTIRE team while also very obviously being so incredibly messed up. because listen you cannot write motormaster, even as a 100% no-redeeming-qualities bastard, as not traumatized. No one just acts like that. Like it can be explored or not but he's always a fucking mess. and I think again we've all at least been tangential to that? Like, everyone knows the "my parents hit me and i'm alright also i have unresolved anger issues and drink to have fun" guy because that's like half my parents' generation; that's Motormaster. Sort of.

and THEN you get into the whole "war" thing and the fact that they just... like... they're Adults TM but they are also very new and not jaded or experienced enough to see the problems in everything and like.
GOD
god

It could be SO GOOD like. it is just so much. you don't have to change anything about them, you just have to follow through on the consequences set out. that's IT. and it would be emotionally devastating.

especially because there is no way in hell they'd let anyone stop them. Like, they're a gestalt. essentially the most fucked-up and toxic and codependent mess possible. There is no fucking way Breakdown or Drag Strip or whatever is going to *actually* be like "yeah this sucks im out" if you keep it that way and like.

AUGH

yknow?


edit: also YEAH about MTMTE, like. i read that comic in about three weeks? so i did manage to get into it but the further i got the more like disillusioned and blah about it i felt. exRID was excellent, but kind of dry, so MTMTE was nice to read in between that, but like... exRID was a narratively satisfying and fascinating story. MTMTE was like the literary version of eating popcorn for dinner and wondering why you're hungry. TO ME. to me. specifically.
but if like... anything in MTMTE actually mattered that would've been so fucking different. they just. didn't let things matter.

[sexytronians]

Yes! Motormaster can resonate with people if he’s written with nuance. Weather or not he changes for the better or worse in a narrative. And sometimes a story about someone who changes despite being the Worst is something really meaningful.

Yes!!! They can’t walk away from each other which makes the dynamic really interesting and horrifying. They’re in each others heads and sparks—and I’m not sure that bond could be broken without fucking them up more even if they’re all still alive. I don’t think they could cope with loosing one of them because they’re a precarious Jenga tower of dysfunction.
…hmm. I’ve gotta note that last part down for some angst fic. :3c

Yep. Also I got very tired of abled queers bigging it up when the issues of ableism IDW1 has were still a thing. ‘Uwu read this bc it’s gay!’ ain’t enough for me and tends to make me not read something out of spite too lol.

I do like MTMTE as a concept and set up for fic plots, but yeah I agree. Idk I like literary popcorn but this was one bag I couldn’t be arsed to read much. :P

[redthedragon]

RE: Motormaster and the gestalt
Honestly, there's also something to be said for like- this is gonna sound awful but i think you'll get what i mean; when the only relationship you've ever been in has been abusive from day 1 it's like. impossible to get away from without serious help. I don't think that even if they weren't bonded to each other, which adds a whole other layer, like. I don't think they'd manage it. The other Decepticons don't care for them, and however miserable they are like. idk breaking away from a model of "do what you're told, expect what you expect, it's miserable but you don't have to think too hard about it" is hard as fuck!
and then with the gestalt bond as well just... WHOOF. Absolutely everything is stacked against them getting even *slightly* more healthy.
when you write the fic [pleading emoji] can i see? i want to seeeee XD

RE: MTMTE
Yeaaah. MTMTE also like. it had issues with ableism but it also had issues with racism and classism. It was political mess, and as much as it might've tried to be progressive it kind of uh... failed at that? A lot? in ways that still set my teeth on edge to this day?

"yeah we have these 'cold constructs' that are sort of a metaphor for a lower caste. our god of knowledge tries to kill them all" UH. you sureeeeee that's where you want to go, comic who established early on that the "good guys" are robot-racist and classist and the "bad guys" were the wrong kind of progressive??? you sure???????? you sure that's the message you want to send??????????????

the entire thing was a clusterfuck if you get into the social commentary it was trying and failing to make

[sexytronians]

Yeah. Not the specific experience but near enough so I do get it. I feel that QoS captures this really well in some of their fics. ‘Why don’t the Stunticons abandon Motormaster’ is an interesting question but one I know the answer too.

If I get around to it yes. Because I’m really not sold on the idea I’ve seen that removing the other Stunticons from Motormaster or the bond will magically make them healthy. (Or that Motormaster should be given up on).

…okay now I just want to write a Motormaster centric fic where I whack readers with ‘abuse survivors who aren’t nice or likeable and hurt others still get a chance to recover actually. Especially when they’re sort of child soldiers’

…My Stunticon bunnies keep reproducing. Hopefully this will result in writing and if it does I will certainly show you!

RE. MTMTE. Yep. There are a lot of metaphors for real-world issues that just landed incredibly poorly.

[redthedragon]

TBQH, I do think the rest of the team is gonna need some distance from Motormaster if they're ever going to get anywhere healthy, and in that time Motormaster is going to have to do a hell of a lot of work. I don't think he should be given up on at all, but I have a hard time seeing like. idk lmao it would be unreasonable to expect him to keep it all together while his team is acting the way they always act, and it would also be unreasonable to expect the rest of the team to cut down on their idiosyncrasies just so that Motormaster would have less stuff around to push him back into his old habits, but i do think they'd need some time apart to build new habits.
Except with the gestalt bond that would be ~highkey torture~ so it probably wouldn't even work if they did separate for a couple months anyway!
But, like, I really don't think that anything short of like. a dedicated team of therapists is going to do anything for them, really; they're all too used to their dynamics, and they do all kind of feed into each other as far as i can tell.

[sexytronians]

Yeah I do think they’d need some distance from Motormaster. It wouldn’t be a magic fix but it would help them at least not have him literally standing over him.

Idk yeah it’s basically a mess. The hardest part of this potential fic is how do I figure out something believable that would unfuck up the Stunticons somewhat.

Depends a lot on how gestalt bonds work too…

Which I’m glad your reply made me consider tbh! Perhaps I just write the Stunticons more before I leap in with this fic lol. :P

[redthedragon]

I know I'd want to have a realllllly solid handle on their characters before I took a stab at that, but honestly, I think you seem to know them pretty well ^-^ If you want to take more time + write more stuff, certainly, I won't complain with more fics to read XD but I would trust you to be able to jump right in and write something solid

[sexytronians]

Oh thank you! I don’t quite trust myself yet with this endeavour but its nice to know someone else does :3

[yvannairie]

This is my obligatory "do it do it do iiiiiiit" from the bleachers.

[redthedragon]

Honestly I might just do it here. I really don't like the Tumblr IDW community for the most part.

which is funny because the Tumblr Transformers community is like 80% IDW and that's my biggest sandbox but. i think the most quintessentially "Fandom Experience TM" is "everyone likes the same thing as i do, but they like it wrong and talk about the wrong parts :( :(" lol. At least here the discussions are more interesting XD

[yvannairie]

I don't know anything about the Stunticons in IDW but MTOs probably make for extremely compelling narratives about collective trauma, too.

[redthedragon]

I don't even think they're in IDW. If they are, they're absolutely background characters. The only ones who get any real screentime are the Combaticons (in one set of issues DX) and the Constructicons.

Literally just. if i make any comparison to IDW, people will come into my mentions and talk about MTMTE. That's just how it goes. But I don't know of any other TF medias that manage to balance the grimdark with the heart, and you'd kind of need both for it to work the way i'm thinking, so I'd have to make comparisons to IDW. OTL

*edit: i mean there's TFP but i don't feel like that did much "exploration of the consequences of our actions" and "following the ripples as far as they can" and like, ExRID and Wreckers were pretty much built on doing that.

[yvannairie]

Yea, I mean,to bring consequences into Aligned you gotta first pull a coherent plot thread out of it from somewhere.

Also huh maybe this explains why so much of Wreckers meta has started to low key annoy me b/c it's treated so exclusively as a Tara&Prowl show, in a way that is very "No resolution, no narrative conclusion,only Feels" -- I thought it might just be the people I follow, but for the lack of a better word, it's the most MTMTE-y through line you can pull out of that series.

[redthedragon]

YEAH IT IS.

And like, I love the Tara/Prowl show but. good lord the entire core of the Wreckers series is mistakes and making them, and trying to fix them by making them worse. Like, Prowl's story is like that too (which is part of why ExRID is so satisfying for me, he and Starscream feature heavily in it and both do that, too lol) but the whole "tarantulas relationship" bit is just. like. the set dressing. Interesting background, but more interesting for what it makes of the present and the choices they're making now, not because of like Oooh They're Exes Ooooh, or whatever the dominant fandom thread about it is.

(I'm lucky in that most of my Wreckers content that crosses my feed tends to be Overlord-centric, and it's still mostly hollow vibes-and-feels stuff, but at least it's like. overlord. it's hard to make overlord unsatisfying when he exists to pretty much Kill Things and Be Snarky.

[yvannairie]

To this day I still carry an axe towards the fandom for completely ignoring the hell Tarantulas put Roadbuster through, and only mentioning Roadbuster when it's time to tut about what monsters the Wreckers are and about how good effort can't wash away all their sins.

Like, if you were talking about Impactor you may have a case, but the text tells us why Roadbuster is the way he is, though.

[redthedragon]

And that's like, the point of the ENTIRE SERIES, too. They're all fucked up but they got that way somehow and are trying to make up for it, one misguided way or another. I don't know how anyone could miss the point any harder but people amaze me every day lol.

Honestly though Tara is such a fascinating character and his entire like. deal gets thrown completely out the window in favor of 'weird gay spider! kinky weird!' when prowl gets involved like 80% of the time. like not just with Roadbuster, though I'd argue that his willingness to do that to someone is a pretty relevant part of his personality but also like. every other thing as well. Fanon Tarantulas is only mean because Prowl told him to be and that just sits wrong with me.

also mmmmmmm i hate the Wreckers takes that are dominant in fandom but i think you know that already. 'redemption arc' this 'irredeemable' that, none of you are actually processing the themes of the text huh

[yvannairie]

Oh, I love that I don't have to see those since too much ~~Dratchet~~ MTMTE content is an automatic unfollow from me at this point, lmao.

No matter how good the opinions might be, I am simply not here to see that much shit about characters I do not care about.

[caiusmajor]

Man, if we're gonna do IDW Stunticons with consequences, I want to see some from THAT TIKE SPIKE USED A MODE-LOCKED BREAKDOWN AS HIS CAR.

[redthedragon]

i straight up forgot that that even happened. God yeah.

that entire arc was a mess, though, honestly. There were so many plot threads that I did not feel like were resolved in ways that were like. even remotely satisfactory DX